Classifications

• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01C—MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; SURVEYING; NAVIGATION; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY
  • G01C21/00—Navigation; Navigational instruments not provided for in groups G01C1/00 - G01C19/00
  • G01C21/26—Navigation; Navigational instruments not provided for in groups G01C1/00 - G01C19/00 specially adapted for navigation in a road network
  • G01C21/34—Route searching; Route guidance
  • G01C21/36—Input/output arrangements for on-board computers
  • G01C21/3679—Retrieval, searching and output of POI information, e.g. hotels, restaurants, shops, filling stations, parking facilities
  • G01C21/3682—Retrieval, searching and output of POI information, e.g. hotels, restaurants, shops, filling stations, parking facilities output of POI information on a road map
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01C—MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; SURVEYING; NAVIGATION; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY
  • G01C21/00—Navigation; Navigational instruments not provided for in groups G01C1/00 - G01C19/00
  • G01C21/20—Instruments for performing navigational calculations
  • G01C21/206—Instruments for performing navigational calculations specially adapted for indoor navigation
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01C—MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; SURVEYING; NAVIGATION; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY
  • G01C21/00—Navigation; Navigational instruments not provided for in groups G01C1/00 - G01C19/00
  • G01C21/38—Electronic maps specially adapted for navigation; Updating thereof
  • G01C21/3804—Creation or updating of map data
  • G01C21/3807—Creation or updating of map data characterised by the type of data
  • G01C21/3811—Point data, e.g. Point of Interest [POI]
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01C—MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; SURVEYING; NAVIGATION; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY
  • G01C21/00—Navigation; Navigational instruments not provided for in groups G01C1/00 - G01C19/00
  • G01C21/38—Electronic maps specially adapted for navigation; Updating thereof
  • G01C21/3863—Structures of map data
  • G01C21/3867—Geometry of map features, e.g. shape points, polygons or for simplified maps
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G01—MEASURING; TESTING
  • G01C—MEASURING DISTANCES, LEVELS OR BEARINGS; SURVEYING; NAVIGATION; GYROSCOPIC INSTRUMENTS; PHOTOGRAMMETRY OR VIDEOGRAMMETRY
  • G01C21/00—Navigation; Navigational instruments not provided for in groups G01C1/00 - G01C19/00
  • G01C21/38—Electronic maps specially adapted for navigation; Updating thereof
  • G01C21/3863—Structures of map data
  • G01C21/387—Organisation of map data, e.g. version management or database structures
  • G01C21/3878—Hierarchical structures, e.g. layering
• • G—PHYSICS
  • G06—COMPUTING OR CALCULATING; COUNTING
  • G06T—IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL
  • G06T11/00—2D [Two Dimensional] image generation
  • G06T11/20—Drawing from basic elements, e.g. lines or circles

Definitions

• Embodiments of the present invention relate to a method and architecture for creating and using multi-level geometry for indoor maps with different level of details.
• an earth map is stored as hierarchical tiles in image format.
• Tiles are predefined and static and are at different resolution. Zoom level and location defines what tiles to take to compose the images on the screen. This format reduces the latency of getting the most relevant information for the user. However, such standards do not exist yet for indoor maps.
• GML Geography Markup Language
• OAC OpenGIS Consortium
• GML maps e.g. Destination Maps XML, by NAVTEQ® GML
• POIs Points of Interest
• An embodiment is directed to generating a polygon representation of a plurality of points of interest (POIs) in a scene having a corresponding base level map of the scene, and creating a new level map including a reduced number of polygon representations of POIs on the basis of elimination of POIs having a lower than specified POI importance level.
• a mobile device e.g., the user device
• FIG. 1 illustrates one configuration of a wireless communication system, in accordance with certain embodiments of the disclosure.
• FIG. 2 illustrates a method of generating a display map based on a pyramid hierarchical reduction of data from a base map data structure in accordance with certain
• FIG. 3 is a graphical illustration of the method described in FIG. 2 in accordance with certain embodiments of the disclosure.
• this method can adjust the complexity of geometry loaded in mobile devices for display according to the context and resolution or zoom level. It may also reduce the latency and power consumption of map loading and information display as a result of the reduced volume of data received by or transmitted from the mobile device.
• CDMA Code Division Multiple Access
• TDMA Time Division Multiple Access
• FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access
• OFDMA Orthogonal FDMA
• SC-FDMA Single-Carrier FDMA
• a CDMA network may implement a radio technology such as Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA), CDMA2000, etc.
• UTRA includes Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA).
• CDMA2000 covers IS-2000, IS-95 and technology such as Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM).
• GSM Global System for Mobile Communication
• An OFDMA network may implement a radio technology such as Evolved UTRA (E- UTRA), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11, IEEE 802.16, IEEE 802.20, Flash-OFDAM®, etc.
• E- UTRA, E-UTRA, and GSM are part of Universal Mobile Telecommunication Ssytem (UMTS).
• Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a release of UMTS that uses E-UTRA.
• UTRA, E-UTRA, GSM, UMTS, and LTE are described in documents from an organization named "3 rd Generation Partnership Project" (3GPP).
• CDMA2000 is described in documents from an organization named "3 rd Generation Partnership Project 2" (3GPP2).
• SC-FDMA Single carrier frequency division multiple access
• PAPR peak-to-average power ration
• FIG. 1 illustrates a wireless system 100 that may include a plurality of mobile stations 108, a plurality of base stations 110, a base station controller (BSC) 106, and a mobile switching center (MSC) 102.
• the wireless system 100 may be GSM, EDGE, WCDMA, CDMA, etc.
• the MSC 102 may be configured to interface with a public switched telephone network (PTSN) 104.
• the MSC 102 may also be configured to interface with the BSC 106.
• Each base station 1 10 may include at least one sector, where each sector may have an omnidirectional antenna or an antenna pointed in a particular direction radially away from the base stations 110.
• each sector may include two antennas for diversity reception.
• Each base station 1 10 may be designed to support a plurality of frequency assignments. The intersection of a sector and a frequency assignment may be referred to as a channel.
• the mobile stations 108 may include cellular or portable communication system (PCS) telephones.
• PCS portable communication system
• the base stations 1 10 may receive sets of reverse link signals from sets of mobile stations 108.
• the mobile stations 108 may be involved in telephone calls or other communications.
• Each reverse link signal received by a given base station 1 10 may be processed within that base station 110.
• the resulting data may be forwarded to the BSC 106.
• the BSC 106 may provide call resource allocation and mobility management functionality including the orchestration of soft handoffs between base stations 1 10.
• the BSC 106 may also route the received data to the MSC 102, which provides additional routing services for interfacing with the PSTN 104.
• An indoor map includes, for example a data structure of geometry of features (e.g., offices, elevators, restaurants, which may be referred to as points of interest (POI)) as a list of objects, such as polygons, for example, indicating one or more of location, size, name, etc.
• POI points of interest
• This may constitute the base layer of a "map pyramid."
• the geometry of the map may be simplified, for example, to show only a region of the indoor map (e.g., a floor, a part of a floor, type of POI, etc.).
• Polygons, lines and other geometrical features and/or less important POIs may be removed from the layer. For example, if the POIs of interest are, e.g., law offices, all other features may be removed. If the POIs are related to safety and evacuation, only stairwells, exit doors, elevators, service shafts, etc., may be retained and offices may be removed.
• An indoor map data structure is the core data in indoor navigation applications. Maps are formatted and stored in multi-level geometry pyramid structure from fine to coarse and from dense to thin. An application accessed by the user selects the most appropriate level from the map pyramid structure to display. The selection is based on a group of criteria including, but not limited to, one or more of the screen size of the device, the degree of zoom-in for a desired level of detail from user's input, the battery level, etc.
• the multi-level map geometry pyramid allows flexible display for various devices. Thus, a user may select a display with minimal detail to achieve fast data transfer with adequate navigation information, select more detail to provide more accurate geographical imaging and meta information about one or more POIs, or some intermediate level of detail. Thus, level selection in map display is driven by device constraints as well as by user need for detail, such as navigation to POIs. This mechanism is useful for widespread implementation on mobile phones for indoor navigation.
• the map generation may take place on a remote server, in which the user provides search input from the mobile device to the server, and a reduced set of information from the base level of the data structure is used to generate a map at a higher level that is less dense with data.
• the process of reducing complexity and data content i.e., paring the data structure to a sub-structure
• the importance of a POI may be measured with a score that depends on the user's search key words and the area of bounding polygon of a POI.
• a server measures the importance score of each POI, merges small neighboring POIs into a complex-POI (or a POI group) with low importance score to create a larger bounding polygon to increase the importance score.
• a POI or complex-POI is chosen to be sent to the mobile device for display if its importance score is above a certain threshold.
• An embodiment of the invention is directed to creating a group of indoor maps at multiple levels of detail according to POI search, and integrating the data structures into a map file in a pyramidal organization that may be accessed by a mobile device application.
• the map file may be stored remotely at the server, or one or more maps may be transmitted for storage on the mobile device.
• the map file may include organization of the geometry of the scene.
• each destination, or point of interest, (POI) in the scene may be described by a polygon line.
• the location (position) of the POI may be derived from actual geographical data (e.g., latitude and longitude), or in a self-defined coordinate system (e.g., where all position data are normalized to a bounding area), which may be computed offline and stored.
• a POI may be represented by a simple polygon for the purpose of showing general location and an indication of size of the POI.
• the polygon representation may be complicated, in order to more accurately portray the physical layout of the POI.
• the polygon representation chosen may be normalized to scale within the bounding area (such as the property limits of a mall or department store), or they may be displayed as oversized to emphasize the POI in the display.
• FIG. 2 illustrates a method 200 of generating a display map based on a pyramid hierarchical reduction of data from a base map data structure.
• a base level data structure of an indoor map is provided, containing the geometry of the indoor environment.
• the data structure includes all geometric details for features of all possible POIs, such as a mall, department store, office building, etc., and which may be stored as a file on a remote server.
• a list of line loops or coordinate points for POIs in the scene is generated to define a polygon representing each POL
• the polygon may be complex enough to provide a recognizable rendering of a POI (e.g., the layout of a restaurant or department store in a mall), however, an aspect of the disclosure is to provide a map with at least a threshold amount of detail for permitting location and navigation to the POI by providing a reduced amount of data over a communications network to the user mobile device.
• POIs Point of interest
• the POIs may be represented, for example, by simple polygon approximations, cross-hairs, "pins,” etc. depending on the size of the POI relative to the level of resolution of the map.
• a base level map as a data structure may be created - the "base" of a pyramid - that may include a set of possible indoor features of the environment of a property of interest. In an example, there may be no filtering out of features that may be of interest in a particular context.
• polygon representations of POIs may be accurate to some standard level of detail (e.g., on the scale of 1 ft. increments, or larger) and stored in the base level of the pyramid data structure, but which may not be practically displayed at this level of detail, depending on the resolution of the display device (i.e., a feature of the polygon would have to be greater than one display pixel to be displayable). Metadata describing properties of the POI may also be included at this level.
• the base level data structure In order to reduce data storage, data transfer, and processing demand on a mobile device, the base level data structure, from which any map may be constructed, may be stored on a server remote from mobile device. Depending on the processing capability and power storage capacity of the remote device, the base level data structure, or parts of it, may be downloaded to and maintained on the mobile device, where the downloaded portions of the data structure may be locally processed.
• a user interacting with the mobile device may specify one or more points of interest.
• the user may be a consumer searching for all shoe vendors in a shopping mall, or a safety inspection officer searching for all fire extinguisher and sprinkler shut-off control valve locations.
• the POI level of interest represents a list of features of interest to the user, which may be transmitted to the server (if such data has not been downloaded to the mobile device).
• the user application on the mobile device thus generates a list of data types (POIs), which may be transmitted to the remote server, for generation of a reduced (“thinned" or "child”) data structure from which a map of reduced complexity may be constructed.
• POIs data types
• the list of POIs corresponding to the specified user input may be used, in method block 240, to create a higher level data structure, from which a map may be constructed, to simplify the map geometry by including only the specified POIs, or types of POIs, of sufficient interest, and removing others of lesser interest.
• the geometry of indoor objects may be simplified in various ways according to various criteria and/or level of importance. For example, line segments with joint angles that are close to 180 degree and adjoining parallel lines may be recursively collapsed. The angle threshold for collapsing line segments may be preset. This renders a map that may be composed from the POI list with less clutter from features of little or no interest to the user. In some cases two or more POIs may be adjacent, or may be related.
• the child data structure may be transmitted to the mobile device, which is adapted to create a map with a user application and information in the child data structure.
• the simplified map may be constructed at the server, and transmitted to the mobile device using less bandwidth or transmission time.
• decision block 250 a determination is made, based on user response or, concurrently, on the context of the search for POIs, whether the level of detail is satisfactory for the user to locate one or more POIs. If the user decides, for example, that the search should be made further selective, such as seeking only "women's shoes," the method may resume at method block 230, where the POI level of interest is more narrowly specified. Alternatively, the user may wish to broaden the interest to locate vendors of both women's shoes and handbags, and the method continues until the level of detail is satisfactorily achieved in decision block 250. Similarly, a plurality of eateries in a food court may be collapsed into a single object, such as a "food court.”
• the mobile device assembles a data structure (whether from internally stored data or from the remote server) to construct a map for display (method block 260) based on the level of detail required to satisfy the interest level for the specified POIs.
• a map file may be stored on a remote server or processor.
• the mobile device parses the map pyramid data from the file and dynamically chooses the most appropriate level of map to display. The selection of the most appropriate map level is based on a group of criteria, which may include the screen size, screen resolution, current zoom-in level, and/or battery level.
• the map level may be constructed at the remote server or processor to contain only the features that permit navigation when displayed on the mobile device.
• navigation from a mall entrance to a particular store or food court may show a skeletal plan of the mall with the location of the mobile device and the destination location, with a line connector showing a path between them.
• the relevant walkway and the POI may be shown, but all other features may be absent from the displayed map, the consequence of which is a display with reduced data content that required a reduced amount of broadcast bandwidth and receiver stored energy to display relative to a fully detailed map.
• Map information is stored in a multilevel hierarchical structure from coarse to fine. For example, at higher levels (i.e., large overview displays, as in a parent node in XML), some structures may be merged or ignored. For example, a food court may be formed as a data feature without indicating individual restaurants or food service counters, or a department store may be represented as a single entity without specifying/displaying individual departments. At higher levels (e.g., a child node in XML), structures may be described in more detail, e.g. with small line segments and polygons, and including metadata describing the POI structure. Data may be requested from a higher level in the pyramid by the mobile device to reduce the amount of data sent to the mobile device.
• higher levels i.e., large overview displays, as in a parent node in XML
• some structures may be merged or ignored.
• a food court may be formed as a data feature without indicating individual restaurants or food service counters, or a department store may be represented as a single
• a display pertaining only to a food court may show individual dining services, or in a department store, the location of various departments.
• the displayed map includes less than the maximum available data from the parent data structure. This has the advantage of requiring less data to be received by the mobile device and requires less power to process the thinner ("child") data structure and provide a simpler map without features that are of lesser or no interest.
• the user may then seek directions to navigate (method block 270) from a current location to one or more of the remaining POIs.
• the result is that far less data, processing time and battery energy are required to serve the user with the desired functionality.
• FIG. 3 illustrates graphically the method described in FIG. 2.
• An indoor map of geometry data of all POIs represented, for example, as a list of polygons is provided as a parent data structure.
• a base level map may be constructed to include a set of POIs.
• a new level of child data structure, simplified by the absence of unimportant POIs is formed, from which a simplified map may be formed.
• the process may be repeated for a narrower definition of POIs searched until a "top level" is reached, in which only the required POI locations are left to form a map.
• the application on the mobile device may then choose the level of map that is most appropriate to display, based on satisfying the criteria for including the POIs with sufficient level of importance according to the specified level of interest.
• the reduced data structure of geometric data may be stored in a map file for faster retrieval and processing on the mobile device than may be done with the parent data structure to quickly and efficiently produce a simple and useful map, containing only features necessary for a given navigation task.
• Map rendering is one of the most energy-costly parts in indoor navigation related applications on mobile devices. The cost is roughly proportional to the complexity of the scene geometry. It may be appreciated that the disclosed method can reduce the energy consumption and extend the battery life for mobile indoor navigation by rendering and loading maps from a remote server with the most appropriate level of geometry detail required for a task, such as navigating. Furthermore, display quality may be improved by rendering fewer geometric objects on the display, and reducing aliasing. [0039] The previous description is provided to enable any person skilled in the art to practice the various aspects described herein. Various modifications to these aspects will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the generic principles defined herein may be applied to previous or other aspects.
• DSP digital signal processor
• ASIC application specific integrated circuit
• FPGA field programmable gate array
• a general purpose processor may be a microprocessor, but in the alternative, the processor may be any conventional processor, controller, microcontroller, or state machine.
• a processor may also be implemented as a combination of computing devices, e.g., a combination of a DSP and a microprocessor, a plurality of microprocessors, one or more microprocessors in conjunction with a DSP core, or any other such configuration.
• a software module may reside in RAM memory, flash memory, ROM memory, EPROM memory, EEPROM memory, registers, hard disk, a removable disk, a CD-ROM, or any other form of storage medium known in the art.
• An exemplary storage medium is coupled to the processor such that the processor can read information from, and write information to, the storage medium.
• the storage medium may be integral to the processor.
• the processor and the storage medium may reside in an ASIC.
• the ASIC may reside in a user terminal (e.g., UE).
• the processor and the storage medium may reside as discrete components in a user terminal.
• the functions described may be implemented in hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof. If implemented in software, the functions may be stored on or transmitted over as one or more instructions or code on a computer-readable medium.
• Computer-readable media includes both computer storage media and communication media including any medium that facilitates transfer of a computer program from one place to another.
• a storage media may be any available media that can be accessed by a computer.
• such computer-readable media can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD- ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices, or any other medium that can be used to carry or store desired program code in the form of instructions or data structures and that can be accessed by a computer.
• any connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium.
• the software is transmitted from a website, server, or other remote source using a coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, twisted pair, digital subscriber line (DSL), or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio, and microwave
• the coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, twisted pair, DSL, or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio, and microwave are included in the definition of medium.
• Disk and disc includes compact disc (CD), laser disc, optical disc, digital versatile disc (DVD), floppy disk and blu-ray disc where disks usually reproduce data magnetically, while discs reproduce data optically with lasers. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
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• Remote Sensing (AREA)
• Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• General Physics & Mathematics (AREA)
• Automation & Control Theory (AREA)
• Geometry (AREA)
• Databases & Information Systems (AREA)
• Theoretical Computer Science (AREA)
• Navigation (AREA)
• Instructional Devices (AREA)

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• 2013
  • 2013-03-08 US US13/791,079 patent/US20140257687A1/en not_active Abandoned
• 2014
  • 2014-03-07 JP JP2015561693A patent/JP2016512342A/ja active Pending
  • 2014-03-07 WO PCT/US2014/021589 patent/WO2014138538A1/en not_active Ceased
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  • 2014-03-07 EP EP14713344.1A patent/EP2965040B1/en not_active Not-in-force
  • 2014-03-07 KR KR1020157027411A patent/KR20150122791A/ko not_active Withdrawn

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